“So, Kayla,” Christie said with a smile. “When can we expect you to lead one of these sessions?”

“Oh no.” Kayla raised her hands defensively. “I’m not wasting my time on those kinds of texts. I mean, you girls had some great insights, but I had a peek at Plato. Thousands and thousands of pages of inane nonsense—I can’t deal with that.”

“Oh cool, so you’ll just ride along, letting us do all the work?” Thandi asked.

“I appreciate the stuff you’ve dug out on the history of authoritarianism,” said Kayla, “but I’m not reading about the definition of ‘the good’ for two hours. I have better things to do.”

“It’s understandable you wouldn’t want to touch Plato with a stick; his work is quite impenetrable,” said Christie. “But there are some rather engaging epic poems—”

Kayla waved a hand. “Ancient drivel. Completely meaningless to today’s reality. People need a kick in the backside to stay focused on life’s real problems.”

“Pray, enlighten us,” said Christie. “How did the great philosopher Kayla Barnes arrive at this epiphany?”

“Sure. I remember when I was seven, it was late afternoon on a Sunday, and I saw the shadows start to move.” Kayla’s voice grew detached, as her eyes fixated on the cieling.

“I looked up,” she continued, “and I thought someone had plucked the sun out of the sky and had thrown it at me—it was moving so fast, coming right down on top of us. I checked some meteor stats when I was older; this one probably travelled a hundred and fifty miles in ten seconds.”

Thandi inhaled sharply. “Lord have mercy.”

“Because I’m a complete dumbass I thought, like, am I supposed to catch this?” Kayla chuckled. “But then it got so bright I had to look away, and the air was really hot too, like a sauna. Then it winked out, and everyone was just kind of staring up at this immense cloud.”

“An airburst?” Christie asked.

“Right—it exploded probably fifteen miles up. But one guy took off running through the town screaming at everyone to get away from the windows, and—again, dumbass here—I turned to my Dad and said ‘why is he so mad?’ But he pushed me to the ground and got on top of me, and then all the windows just exploded. Um… then after the first big bang you could hear dozens of smaller thunderclaps, almost like being at a shooting range—they just went on and on.”

“The sonic booms of the fireball,” Christie explained.

“Right. Oh, and we all got sunburn too, so that was fun.” Kayla stared at her fingernails for a moment. “So…you don’t… matter. The universe will paste you against the rock in a heartbeat and forget you in the next. The meaning of life? Get your community through to tomorrow. If you have time to sit around reading about the timeless love of two losers, then you should probably get off your ass and do something more constructive.”

There was a thoughtful silence, and Kayla noticed Rose staring at her with a suspicious expression.

“Kayla,” said Christie, “I really appreciate you sharing that experience and I think you certainly have a valuable perspective. That being said, I might allow you to flesh out your thesis a little bit more before I toss out humanity’s vast collection of art and philosophy.”

“You are very brave,” Thandi said quietly.

Kayla laughed. “No, I don’t think so. I just try not to get worked up about things I can’t control. I don’t always succeed though. But I mean all these planets under human control—people died to colonize all of them. Landing on an uninhabited world and trying to set up civilization in the face of all the elements against you is incredibly dangerous. This is the sacrifice our worlds are built on.”

Rose glared at her. “I’m sure you’re right about that, but don’t you think you’re going a bit far this time?”

“Rose…” Christie said cautiously, but she was ignored.

“I am, of course, very sorry for what happened to your father,” Rose said, with strained politeness. “But I think it’s fair to say that the anti-Helvet feeling in your colony has influenced your memory in this case. Everyone knows that the asteroid defense deflects rocks that big before they get too close.”

Kayla rolled her eyes. “Awesome, this argument again. Rose, the first of Caldera’s telescopes only launched to orbit a couple of years ago.”

“Absolute nonsense. I remember the conversation with the Mayor of Rackeye very clearly, and he assured us that all defensive measures were in place.”

“Yeah, he was lying.”

“Oh, please!” Rose spat.

“Actually,” Christie interjected, placing her hand on Rose’s, “Kayla’s right. I remember reading about it in the astronomy journal, and I was surprised that it was such a low priority project for a colony with a volcanic moon.”

Kayla shrugged. “It’s still super rare to see a rock hit the ground. Most of the planet is uninhabited, so the odds of anyone being killed are small. There are more pressing dangers to worry about.”

“I was not lied to!” Rose insisted, her face scarlet.

“Then he exaggerated,” Kayla said. “He meant there would be an evacuation shuttle or something. Of course, you have to spot the damn thing in time—”

Rose scoffed. “How could they possibly expect to evacuate an entire planet with shuttles? Come on!”

Kayla gave her a pitying look. “Not the entire planet—just your family and a few others.”

Rose stared back, her face now pale.

“Oh, honey,” Christie said as she wrapped an arm around Rose’s shoulders. “You really bought every line they fed you, didn’t you?”

Rose jumped up from her bed and stormed out of the cabin into the night.

“Okay, that was definitely not my fault,” Kayla said.

Christie glared at her. “You are cold, Madam, and heartless. Of course it wasn’t. Who cares?”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“She accused me of being a liar again!” Kayla protested. “I thought we were past this.”

“Do you know what it’s like to be lied to and manipulated by everyone you thought you respected? And to have to face being taken for a fool?”

“No.” Kayla’s throat caught and she swallowed a sob. “My father was the most honest, courageous man I ever knew.”

Christie’s eyes gleamed with steel. “He told you that you were wonderful, I imagine. That you were perfect the way you were, and that no matter who you wanted to be, or what you wanted to do, he would support you. That your failure to achieve perfection in any of a dozen strictly prescribed skills did not mean you were a public shame to the family.

“I mean—I had to do the chores properly,” Kayla muttered.

“Not a thing that Rose has ever heard in her life. She was spoiled, yes, and so were you, in a different way.”

Kayla hung her head as Christie left the cabin in search of her friend.

Out of the thirty-two recruits that started Stress Phase, eleven had dropped out. Seven had to recycle due to injuries. The fourteen that remained lined up in the camp’s square for the infamous endurance run, and a hollow pit opened in Kayla’s stomach as Instructor McKinnon made the briefing.

They were going to fast march for twenty miles, backpacks filled with rocks, and reach the finish line within six hours. It would be crushing, McKinnon explained, and intensely painful. The recruits would not pass the boot camp course until they could complete it. Failure of an individual due to injury would result in a complete course recycle.

McKinnon, Susaki, and Cieslik drove the class several hours from the camp to a less mountainous region of the moon, where the course stretched out across a rolling landscape of low, steep hills and ravines. After a short briefing from McKinnon, the instructors loaded down the recruit’s rucksacks with rocks, and weighed them carefully. Then the group set off, and at first the going was easy, as they ran up steep hills, and walked across embankments, ploughed through muddy ditches and dodged between moraines.

Soon, Mckinnon quickened the pace, and the pain began to set in. Kayla’s thighs and calves burned with acid, while her lungs heaved to take in air. Sharp pain dug into her chest with every breath, and she felt the alarming sensation of her heart getting weaker. Then her knees began to shake, and every step was a struggle to stay balanced. Beside her, Rose matched her pace, while Christie and Thandi were ahead in the short double column of recruits as they jogged at what seemed to be an impossible pace across the scrub-covered hillside.

At the two-hour mark, Kayla felt she couldn’t take it anymore. She started to adjust the strap of the rucksack that cut through her skin, though it didn’t provide her more than a few seconds relief. The biting pain began to build again, slowly, and unstoppably, until she reached up and shifted the stiff fabric across what had to be a raw welt under the shirt. She liked the distraction. It gave her something else to think about besides the dull landscape passing underfoot.

She tried to change her rhythm, or repeated songs over and over in her head—any pitiful attempt to find a sliver of comfort. At the three-hour mark, she was bargaining with herself. She would quit after the next hill, she told herself, knowing it was a lie, but grateful for it anyway. They took short, desperately welcomed breaks; just enough time to gulp down water and energy bars before the torment continued. Kayla lost track of the time, and her mind wandered into fantasy—imagining dragons and armies clashing across the hills.

There was no path, just treacherous lumpy hillside, ready to catch the ankle of a runner made careless by exhaustion. Somehow, nobody fell, and they kept the merciless pace under the exhortations of Instructor McKinnon. She kept pace with them the whole time, while Susaki brought up the rear.

“You’re doing well, ladies!” Mckinnon yelled. “Just a bit further! Fast pace until the end.”

Only one thing scared Kayla as she kept her legs pumping. Over the last six months, she had grown fitter and mentally tougher than she ever imagined she could be. No matter what the instructors threw at her, she would rather die than give up. She glanced down at the rough terrain beneath her feet and thought about rolling an ankle. The instructors would make her go through the whole course again, without Thandi, or Christie, or even—she had to admit—Rose. The thought made her blood run cold.

As the run dragged on, she felt like she was watching herself from a distance. The pain was still there, but she could observe it, as though she had become aware of her own breathing. It passed through her and around her, like rushing water. She imagined waves breaking against a beach, crashing rhythmically. First there were small swells in short bursts. Sometimes the water would recede quickly, and there would be a long pause, followed by a huge breaker that raced up the sand, pelting her feet with sharp pebbles. Kayla stood in the surf, unmoving as the big wave struck and almost threw her over into a maelstrom of rushing water—but she held her ground. It was nothing more than a choice. She could stand and let the waves beat helplessly against her for eternity.

The illusion was shattered when a truck appeared on the horizon—the final checkpoint. With the seductive temptation of imminent release, the pain crashed down more urgently. Kayla gulped back sobs and tried to stop thinking. Time stretched out unendingly while the truck never came closer.

It was a cruel trick, she thought; every time she looked down, an instructor drove it further away. She hated them, and she would show them she couldn’t be broken. Then the truck was closer, and she loved them—that they had brought her so far. Then it was a few hundred paces away, and Kayla let her mind go blank. She was going to make it. They all were.

“Full sprint to the end!” called McKinnon “Dig deep now, show them who you are!”

Adrenaline lanced through Kayla’s body, followed by a wave of euphoria. She could go anywhere, do anything—nobody would hold her back. It lasted until they reached the truck, and then it drained from her in a moment, leaving nothing but raging blood in her ears. Her trembling legs could barely continue to support her.

The ordeal was finally over. After six months of suffering, she had earned what she had always dreamed of. Kayla felt tears welling up, and as exhaustion overwhelmed her, she let herself hunch forward.

“Stand tall,” McKinnon called. “Have pride in yourselves. Rangers keep their heads held high!”

Kayla obeyed, and, despite the pain, as she straightened up and raised her head she felt a piece of euphoria return.

Mckinnon marched the recruits to a halt by the truck, where a uniformed woman waited for them. She wore bright parade dress, covered in gleaming medals, with the stars of a general, and her aide carried a bag. They waited patiently as the recruits formed a line facing her.

McKinnon passed each of them and shook their hands. “Congratulations ladies. You’ve made it. General Kayode will now present you with your berets.”

Kayla tried to stop herself from shaking like a leaf as the class formed a line. She wiped the tears out of her eyes, though they were quickly replaced by more.

The General addressed them. “Ladies, I cannot fully express how incredibly proud I am of all of you. You have achieved the very highest standards set by Valkyrie, and It is my honor to welcome you into the organization. I will now present you with your green berets, your official recognition as a Valkyrie Ranger. Wear this hat with pride, because very few women will ever achieve what you have.”

The general stepped up to each of them in turn, while McKinnon named them. “Ranger Thandi Khawula.”

“Congratulations, Ranger Khawula. Accept your Beret.” General Kayode placed it on her head and straightened it out. “How does it feel?”

Thandi was struggling to blink back tears. “Thank you ma’am. Incredible—worth every moment,” she said.

Standing beside her, Kayla saw that Chisom Idowu’s eyes shone with fire as she patiently waited her turn. Each recruit exchanged a few words with the general as she slowly worked her way down the line.

While Kayla waited, she reflected on the strangeness of the setting. She was stood on a lonely hilltop surrounded by wilderness. Her heart burned with pride to see Thandi, Christie, Chisom, and even Rose standing beside her. She felt a sense of achievement she would never be able to explain to anyone else. In fact, she didn’t even want to.

The General came to her. “Congratulations, Ranger Barnes.”

“Thank you ma’am,” Kayla said and sniffed.

“How are you feeling?”

Kayla paused for a moment, not sure she could find the right words. “Ready for more,” she said, and grinned as the other recruits laughed. The general placed her beret on her head and shook her hand.

As the general moved off with her aide, Susaki walked over, smiled, and punched Kayla in the shoulder. “Don’t let it go to your head. See you around, Ranger Barnes.”

The general turned, saluted the rank, and ordered them to fall out as Rangers. Kayla darted over to Rose and lifted her in the air with a bear hug.